New Phone

Ok, so I found out a couple weeks ago that Verizon changed they way they do things, and so now instead of being able to do my "New Every Two" in September, I can do it this month--a whopping two months earlier than the two months early in September (I renewed in Nov of '05). Well, the mum-in-law needed a phone and all our old phones were basically dead. The phone I have been wanting for a while was only $30 after all my credits. I was even able to change my plan so I have more minutes for the same price as I'm paying now. Nice, eh? The phone I purchased is the dual flipping Samsung. Flip it open one way, and you have your phone. Flip it open another way, and you have your text messaging querty keyboard. It's perfect. I type messages to people about 5x faster. I highly recommend this phone.

Harry Potter up the Wazoo

I'm sorry for the dry spell of no posts. I have been insanely busy with school, work, family, and getting ready for my mother-in-law's stay at the old Wells home. I will do a bit to catch up.

As I'm sure most people in the US (and many other parts of the world) are reading Harry Potter, those of you who are reading this are either done with the book or could care less about Harry Potter books. I think about half the people I know refuse to read the books and choose, however, to see the movies instead. You are definitely missing out. I love both. I hate trendy stuff, but this I found I like. Good storyline. I could read this to my kids, and be happy myself.

Yoshiko, Ren, and I went to Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (HPOP) the Saturday after it opened at the Grand XanGo Theater at the Scera in Orem with about half of XanGo's staff. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Yoshiko liked it, but thought it wasn't quite what she had expected. I told her she really needed to read the books to really understand what was going on. I explained that the Lord of the Rings was, as a whole, a 900 page book and they made that into three-three hour long movies. HPOP has about the same amount of pages and they crammed it all into two-and-a-half hours. It's like the old joke about how many BYU coeds you could fit into a VW Bug: just doesn't work. She definitely needs to read the books.

Anyway, my mother-in-law came into town last week. Before she came, I purchased Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in Japanese before she came out. Set of two books--¥450 (about $4) is all I payed for that bad boy. It was listed as used and was brand-spankin new. Brand new, it's ¥4000 (about $35). Now I have the first four books in Japanese. Three more there and five more in English. Here's a pic of my Jap books lined up.

So basically in a one-week period, I see the new HP movie, get my new Japanese HP book, and buy the last HP book in English. Doesn't this cover in the pic below look enticing. I had to stop reading the first HP book in Japanese for a little bit to read HP and the Deathly Hallows.

Kinda funny, tho. I've had the book since Saturday, and I still haven't finished it. When I read it, I can't put it down. It's finding the time to read that's the problem. Hopefully I'll have it done tomorrow. Well, on to the next post.

New addition to the family

Finally!!!

Today, after much looking around, we finally bought a piece of furniture that I have been promising to buy for Yoshiko for years. As you can see in the picture, it's a piano. Thanks to some help from Yoshiko's parents, we are now proud owners of a Yamaha M425 44" piano. Out of all the pianos we tried out, Yamaha was by far the best. Yoshiko didn't like the way the Kawai pianos sounded. The only piano that was really a temptation from buying the piano we went with was a 20 year old Everett piano that was built by Yamaha. However, the new piano sounded the best. Plus, with all the extra stuff the new piano came with, it wasn't much of a hard choice to go with the piano we went with. Hopefully this piano fits in our apartment. haha. No worries, we already have the perfect spot for it.

Now comes the waiting time. They can't deliver the piano till Tuesday. I guess we've waited three years to buy a piano; we can wait a few more days. I am so excited to have a piano. Yoshiko can finally practice without having to drive all the way up to BYU.

Ren was super cute in the piano store today. He grabbed some piano sheet music, put it up on the stand, sat down on the bench, opened the book, and started playing the piano. Obviously, he was not playing the music, but the whole idea that he knew what to do was funny. He's insanely smart.

My 100oz Maverick mug

As I was leaving the gas station yesterday, I thought about how I haven't written a blog in about a week and how great a blog my 100 oz mug would make. In the picture to the left, you will see that I have seat belted in the passenger seat. Besides having 100 oz of Mt. Dew greatness, whenever I need to go anywhere, I just need to belt the thing into the seat next to me, and it will never spill. Don't worry people, I don't drink the whole thing myself (unless it's finals week and I have to study economics or write a song). I actually bought this because I was going to try to finish working on my car this weekend. That didn't happen. I was sick all weekend and am still sick.

One of the funniest things about these mugs is that they have a warning on them saying not to leave the top open because children can drown. I guess it might not be that funny because the only reason they would put a label like that on the mug would be because some little kid did drown in a mug this size. I don't see how, but I guess it could.

Anyway, I love this mug. This will be my car work, finals study buddy forever.